No Worse Nightmare
by KroganVanguard
Summary: The nightmares start a few days after they come back from Paris. A post-ep of sorts for 'Hunt' (5x16). Mentions of PTSD, violence, anxiety etc.


He has nightmares about running.

It's funny, in a way, because he's not a runner in real life. He works out, for sure, but he prefers the slow, painful burn of the dumbbells, the cold and metallic clangs of the weights dropping back onto their racks when he's finished, the simple pride he gets from lifting his personal best. He's not vain, but he doesn't mind the way the arms of his t-shirts get tighter, the way her green-brown eyes linger on his biceps when he's casually walking around the house. Lifting and weights, that's his workout routine.

He hates running. He almost skips past the banks of cardio machines at the gym, the very sight of those black identikit treads boring him. He doesn't waste a moment's thought on running during the day, when he's awake, when there's a million other things to think about in life.

No, running haunts his nights.

The first time was three nights after they came back. He doesn't know why it took that long, or indeed whether that was a short amount of time instead, but he remembers every single detail of that dream, etched into his memory by pain and fear. Running through stone-lined hallways, the chatter of bullets in the air, Alexis's smaller hand enfolded his. Running. Endless running.

Her hand slipping out of his as she stumbles back, her hair a halo of orange.

Bullets. Running.

The spray of blood.

The first time it's his. The second, hers. The latter is infinitely worse.

He knows the reality of someone he loves bleeding out in his arms, so his imagination fills in the details with vivid clarity. The way her already pale skin becomes grey, loses pallor. Her hair fanned out around her head, the crimson of her blood seeping through his pumping fingers. Her eyes slowly fading, closing as she loses consciousness.

There same way it had happened at Montgomery's funeral.

The thought losing Alexis haunts his footsteps, dogging his heels as the nightmare loops again, a vicious trap he can't escape, not till it has put him through the wringer over and over. Not till it will let him.

He runs, his hand clasped around his daughter's. They run.

* * *

His girlfriend (it's a spectacularly mundane word for what Kate Beckett means to him, but it has to make do till he can find the perfect time to unbox that ring he's bought) isn't stupid. She figures it out the second night he wakes up gasping, a chilly sweat crossing his brow, his fervent uttering that it's "nothing" to no avail. She knows him, knows him better than anyone else in the world. She knows that something is wrong, knows when he wakes up out of the dread stalking his sleep, waking her up because he's curled up around her.

She has nightmares of her own. She knows.

He remembers the first time he held through that PTSD-fuelled nightmare, her screams shockingly loud in the silence of the night, the dark of her apartment. The way he'd held her gently as she gotten herself under control, her voice halting and broken as she'd described her nightmare, the way the bullet had pierced his chest, how he'd bled out on top of her as she'd desperately tried to keep the blood in. The way she'd dragged him into the shower afterwards, scoured every inch of his body, reassuring herself that he was there, alive, breathing, whole. The way their hands had joined, explored her scars, the reality they'd lived through.

She knows.

Her cool, slim fingers wipe away the chilly beads of sweat on his brow, and then she wraps them around his arm, leaning into him with her whole body, letting him know that she's there while he struggles to bring his breathing under control, great and rasping breaths slowly replaced by shallower, more normal ones. The panic slowly falls away too, the urgent need to see his daughter, to see that she's alive, that she's okay, fades with it. Not that it recedes completely, just to manageable levels, till he's no longer physically holding himself back from leaping out of bed to go check on her asleep in her room or ring the dorm or…

She holds him through all of that, and he loves her for it.

She doesn't press either, not right away. She knows the benefits of letting him have his space, his time, and he can be stubborn when he wants to be. The first week passes. The nightmares continue. The second week passes. He still wakes up gasping and frightened.

He starts to avoid sleep. Plays video games late into the night. Watches infomercials. Pretends to stay up late writing so tiredness will overwhelm the dreams. It doesn't work.

She doesn't press then either.

She just gently hands him the card of her therapist, drops a kiss on his forehead, and goes into work. Alexis has already been seeing someone, he's made sure of that, but he's resisted the need for himself. He doesn't know why exactly. It's not that he thinks it would make him weak. Beckett is the strongest person he knows and she still sees Dr. Burke from time to time, as she needs to. Hell, he admires her for it.

* * *

The running continues. One foot in front of the other, accelerating through the halls of the house and the alleyways of Paris. Shoulder-charging a gunman who pops into their path. His feet on old, slippery wooden, cobblestones, the marble steps of the US embassy.

Running. Forever running. Chatter and bullets around them. Blood and loss and injury and pain. Darkness.

Death.

He knows he's starting to look haggard from the lack of restful sleep. He even tries to tell Beckett to sleep a few nights at her place, get a full night's sleep for herself. She won't have it, of course. She knows what It was like to wake up alone with those nightmares still pounding inside the head, and she won't let him do it alone.

Neither of them, mutually, acknowledge how sad and hard won that knowledge was for her. How they both scraped through that summer apart, hurting, angry, anguished, alone.

She's right, as she usually is.

He has to go see someone.

* * *

Burke refers him to another set of therapists, regretfully citing his confidential professional relationship with Beckett. It makes him like the man more, for what it is worth.

So now he sits here in this plush but understated office. The couch is leather, expensive, comfortable. The lighting is soft, golden, the carpet thick under his feet. The faintest scent of lavender hangs in the air, soothing. There's a small water aquarium in the corner where brightly coloured fish dance through the clear blue water and the rocks that populate the glass tank, an intricate dance that catches his eye almost despite himself. He knows if he ever needs to put a therapist's office in one of his books, he's got the perfect one to model it on now, and that writer's side of his brain, the one he can't turn off is already filing all the information away, ready to build the scene again when needed.

The therapist sitting across from him is tall and grey-eyed, her dark brown hair curled into a professional-looking bun. Dr. Elizabeth Meier, with her expensive pen and creamy shade of paper and a look of gentle concern and understanding.

He taps his feet on the floor, as if he was running.

"So, Richard. Why haven't you been sleeping?"

Her voice is like a cup of warm milk, or hot chocolate, gently soothing.

He closes his eyes, forces his feet to be still.

"It's about my daughter. Three weeks ago, she was kidnapped. It's OK, she's back now. Safe. But…"

* * *

It's not pretty, nor easy, but some time the week after he gets a full night's sleep.

He doesn't have to run any more.

He walks.

* * *

_A/N: I really wanted to explore what kind of damage Alexis's kidnapping might have done to Castle, in a way the show obviously couldn't. Please let me know what you thought about this pretty experimental piece. Thanks for reading!_


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